August 2016

Dec 31, 2011

Some words for hangover, like ours, refer prosaically to the cause: the Egyptians say they are “still drunk,” the Japanese “two days drunk,” the Chinese “drunk overnight.” The Swedes get “smacked from behind.” But it is in languages that describe the effects rather than the cause that we begin to see real poetic power. Salvadorans wake up “made of rubber,” the French with a “wooden mouth” or a “hair ache.” The Germans and the Dutch say they have a “tomcat,” presumably wailing. The Poles, reportedly, experience a “howling of kittens.” My favorites are the Danes, who get “carpenters in the forehead.” In keeping with the saying about the Eskimos’ nine words for snow, the Ukrainians have several words for hangover.

Hebrew only recently added a word for the malady; 50% of Jews are said to have a low tolerance for alcohol. I used to be able to hang with the drinking half of the tribe, but I've aged into the lightweight clan.

Dec 28, 2011

We went to Florida. I'm acculturated to the ideal of Christmas weather colder than what I grew up on in NC, and the transplanting of pagan traditions from northern Europe to the palm trees feels strange to me. Still, big fun with the in-laws. The dog seemed happy to see us when we got home.

Dec 27, 2011

I had not realized that the Weatherspoon has a Diego Rivera drawing in its collection (image not yet online), but reading about this show led me to that discovery.

Left, Frozen Assets, about which more here: Rivera’s jarring vision of [New York City] -- in which the masses trudge to work, the homeless are warehoused, and the wealthy squirrel away their money -- struck a chord in 1932, in the midst of the Great Depression.

I mentioned not long ago that Luna and I were seeing signs of resilience and renewed growth downtown; this is the project upon which we had stumbled. Meanwhile, the new Hibachi Cafe around the corner gets a good review, with which I'm happy to concur.

We were back this warm week at GSO's great courthouse plaza, which is so nice that if I had not called my architect friend to talk about the experience last time I would have done it this time.

"At this festive season of the year, Mr. Scrooge," said the gentleman, taking up a pen, "it is more than usually desirable that we should make some slight provision for the Poor and Destitute, who suffer greatly at the present time. Many thousands are in want of common necessaries; hundreds of thousands are in want of common comforts, sir."

Genuinely curious: Why did the N&R choose to give the top left quarter of its front sports page to a photo from the Kentucky-Samford game, local interest in which seems likely to have been minimal?

Wouldn't the State game, which was relegated to less-choice real estate below the fold, have been a more logical choice than a widely-disliked Goliath from another state pounding on an even more distant David? Even Butler-Gonzaga would have made more sense in terms of national attention.

Also: What are the plans to hire an editor in chief over on Market Street?

Chanukah, a minor Jewish holiday commemorating a successful rebellion against some of Alexander the Great's heirs, must be upon us soon, I surmise, as well-meaning white people who have been led to believe it's the Jewish Christmas keep wishing me a happy one.

Dec 18, 2011

Havel's is the rare life, Milan Kundera has written, that resembles a work of art and gives "the impression of a perfect compositional unity." Consider: A bourgeois boy becomes a bohemian playwright; he then becomes a dissident, who, for the crime of writing subversive essays and helping to organize a subversive movement called Charter 77, is encouraged by the regime to master the art of welding in a reeking Czech prison; finally, in late November, 1989, everything implodes and he is leading demonstrations in Wenceslas Square, and hundreds of thousands of people are shouting "Havel na hrad!" ("Havel to the Castle!"); within days, he is the head of state, working in the same hilltop redoubt that served as a seat of power for dynasts of the Bohemian kingdom and the Hapsburg monarchy, for the emissaries of Berlin and the satraps of the Kremlin.

Greensboro makes a cameo appearance* in this article about the Occupy movement, a phenomenon built on personal stories that "amass the moral force of a Steinbeck novel."

Before Occupy Wall Street, the economic upheavals of the past few years produced no organized movement of the have-nots...the Obama Administration failed to harness public anger or turn the economy around, and the Tea Party wore out its welcome after the 2010 elections. When Occupy Wall Street lit a match, the wood was bone-dry. Suddenly, there was a dramatic, public way to talk about problems—money in politics, income inequality, corporate greed—that frustrated Americans but seemed intractable...

...The most important facts about our society, widely known but seldom mentioned, are now the first order of conversation...In this sense, Occupy Wall Street has already done its work...No one should expect this protean flame to transform itself into a formal political organization with a savvy strategy for enacting reforms and winning elections. That’s someone else’s job.

* "Occupy Wall Street became an instant brand across the country...in Greensboro, North Carolina, a march of seven hundred people was organized with little advance notice, largely through social media."

Freshly turned red soil covered his coffin, which went into the ground two weeks and a day before he was due home. There were two shriveled carnations on the damp dirt. There was no marker yet, no indication that this was a soldier’s grave.

Dec 16, 2011

The bill has so many other objectionable aspects that we can’t go into them all. Among the worst: It leaves open the possibility of subjecting American citizens to military detention and trial by a military court. It will make it impossible to shut the prison in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. And it includes an unneeded expansion of the authorization for the use of military force in Afghanistan to include indefinite detention of anyone suspected of being a member of Al Qaeda or an amorphous group of “associated forces” that could cover just about anyone arrested anywhere in the world.

The Federal Reserve Bank of New York recently asked a simple question: What percentage of mortgages lent during the bubble went to people who owned more than one home?

Its answer: nationwide, over a third. In Arizona, California, Florida, and Nevada, it was nearly half. Astoundingly, about 1 in 10 mortgages lent in those states during 2006 and 2007 went to those who owned more than four homes. All figures are about double the rate seen before the bubble.

The article takes pains to cite the media and cultural vibe during the bubble, which made a second home seem like both an investment and a birthright, and that stuffmatters, but I wouldn't let the lenders or the borrowers themselves off too easily.

JR posts on the meanings of "No Comment;" Lex responds that we aren't always told exactly what's not being commented upon, and Robert notes the speaks-volumes lack of comment by officials of other universities on this HPU story.

Dec 14, 2011

Greensboro Police Chief Ken Miller:

“As this situation rapidly unfolded, we shared the concern that a potential breakdown in the system may have contributed to the tragic death of Officer Figoski on Monday. We conducted a thorough review of our records, and had in-depth interviews with our employees. This review indicates that people performed their duties appropriately and in accordance with established protocols.”

The listification of American journalism didn't begin with the Forbes 400, but I think we accelerated the process. Once Forbes began turning out magazines the size of a small-city phone book, we quickly got orders to publish more and more lists, until even junior staffers were saying to each other that the quality of our product was suffering as a result.

We had no clue what was coming.

Lists are huge on the net, in some part because the medium lends itself to quick hits, but also because publishers can sell each click to the next item as another page view. And JR and Jeff are right, most of the wrap-ups and predictions are pretty stupid.

Worse, it's easy to assume that every feature presented in that form -- even those that involve actual reporting -- is guilty of the same sins.

Also, the David Letterman Top Ten frequently was funny in the '80s, kids.

“I’m a conservative Republican, and this goes against all my principles,” said Brian Coppola, the chairman of the Board of Supervisors of Robinson Township. The pending legislation, he said, “is an enormous land grab on the part of the industry. Our property rights are being trampled.”

NYT follows the Inquirer's lead on the erosion of local control in the shale gas boom.